Snowdrift
by Giacinta
Summary: The brothers are settling in at the bunker, enjoying its perks, when Sam discovers something unpleasant. It's up to Dean to console his unhappy little brother.


Snowdrift.

xxxxxxxxx

Dean had commented on how lucky they were that the spate of freezing weather had spared their area of Kansas, while the rest of the country had been submerged by a snowfall that hadn't been seen in living memory.

Sam had snorted when Dean had blithely assigned the fact to his awesomeness.

"See Sammy," he'd said smirking, eyes on the TV. "I'm so damn hot that the snow is afraid to take me on. I might just melt her down to a watery shivering mush!"

"Yeah, I'm sure that's the reason," Sam had answered, rolling his eyes at his idiotic brother before yawning and heading off to bed, leaving Dean to his late-night erotic viewing!

Strangely enough, the interior of the bunker always remained at the same comfortable temperature despite the variations in the outside weather. As yet the brothers had still to discover just how the systems worked so perfectly after all these years of neglect.

x

Naturally the next morning when Dean went to open the door to check on the Impala, he was met with a wall of hard-packed, frozen snow which completely covered the low-lying door of the bunker, extending to heaven knows what heights.

"Seems you're not so friggin' awesome after all, dude," Sam grinned coming to stand beside his brother, blue-green eyes contemplating the wall of white. "Guess we're snowed in like everyone else!"

"Shut up, Francis," Dean bitched. "I just hope my baby's okay under all that snow."

"Feel free to dig your way out," Sam invited. "I'm gonna stay right here until it melts. There's no way we can take on a hunt anyway, even if one turned up."

"Good job I stocked up on grocery supplies the other day then," Dean declared, closing the door with disgust. "I just might dedicate myself to rustling up some of the recipes I've come across, leafing through these old magazines," he added, perking up.

x

Sam cast his eyes down, holding his lips rigidly in a half-smile, not wanting to laugh outright at his brother's new-found love of cooking, not that Sam was complaining. Dean, like everything else he took to heart, was destined to come out on top!

Of course, Sam wasn't going to compliment him on his cooking though; what were brothers for, if not to bait each other.

"So what are you going to poison me with today, chef?" he asked, grimacing as if in pain.

"You ungrateful Sasquatch!" Dean shot back." I've never seen you eat as much as you have while I've been serving you up wholesome bunker food. That skinny ass of yours is even starting to fill out."

"No it isn't," Sam replied, instinctively running a hand over his butt, provoking a satisfied smirk on Dean's face.

"Yes, it is! Before long, thanks to my cooking, you'll be Sammy the chubby twelve-year-old again, " he grinned wiggling his eyebrows al la Groucho Marx, before disappearing into the kitchen.

x

Sam sighed happily.

The few weeks they'd passed in the bunker had been the best days both he and Dean had experienced in a long, long time. He'd remained astonished and thrilled at the sight of the shelves full of books and lore, while Dean had taken to the comforts and luxuries the bunker offered, like a duck to water, but Sam was under no illusions; they were Winchesters and this, at most, was the calm before the storm.

x

His attention was caught by John's journal lying at the far end of the table, and Sam reached out an arm to pull it towards him.

He and Dean had flipped through its pages uncountable times, while searching for answers in the untidy entries penned in their dad's rushed handwriting.

Sam passed a pensive thumb over the initials HW engraved on the inside front cover. Strange that neither he nor Dean had ever dwelt on the reason for them until Henry had appeared to tell them.

I suppose when one's so used to seeing something all their lives, one doesn't even latch on to incongruous details like HW instead of JW, he mused.

The journal was well-worn now with the continual use, the entries stopping just before John died.

Dean had begun one of his own when John had started going off on hunts without him, but when he and Sam had joined up after Jessica's death, it had been put to the side in favour of a virtual computerized version, where Sam kept their hunts well-documented and up to date.

Sam turned the pages almost reverently.

Along with the Impala, it was the only true memento they had of their father, John's body having been burned on a funeral pyre in the way of hunters.

Sam and his dad had never been what you could call close. Dean claimed they were too similar; two stags butting heads, and maybe that was true, but his dad had traded his life to the yellow-eyed demon to allow Dean to live, and that alone made up for everything in Sam's eyes.

x

He stopped when he came to the two white pages.

He had once asked Dean why, in the middle of the journal, his dad had jumped them.

Dean had shrugged the question off. The pages had probably been stuck together and dad had simply turned them as one, he'd replied; or maybe he'd meant to go back and add a codicil to the info on the previous pages.

Sam ran a hand over the blank pages but he felt no sticky residue, or any imperfections on them to give reason to Dean's 'stuck together 'theory. It seemed that John had simply left the two pages blank.

Sam felt his instincts booting in. Just as they had never paid attention to the HW initials, maybe these blank pages were more than they seemed.

He held the pages up to the light, but all he could see was the faint writing on the other sides coming through.

x

He cast his mind back to the night before.

What was it that they had been watching on TV, while Dean was bitching at how he'd show the douche-bag of an actor what hunting fuglies was really like; not dressing up in a cute costume and coming home without a hair out of place!

'Arrow', yeah! The guy had a book with white pages, and he'd seen the pages fill with names when he'd heated them. Invisible ink!

Sam felt a tingling in his gut. What if?...No, it was ridiculous even to think it! John wouldn't resort to anything so hackneyed, but his long legs took him to his duffel where he had a pair of infra-red night goggles, and he found himself fitting them over his eyes.

He almost keeled over in surprise when the white pages filled up with his Dad's unmistakable scrawl. What could be so important that John had resorted to invisible ink?

As he skimmed quickly through the two pages, he soon found out, and he pulled off the goggles just as Dean walked into the library, his jeans spotted with flour.

x

"Sam, I'm gonna attempt pie!" he announced flamboyantly. "I can give you apple or cherry, dude. I'm gonna let you choose little brother, out of the goodness of my heart..." but he stopped short at the expression on Sam's face.

"Sam? Something wrong? You're as white as a sheet."

Sam looked away, not wanting to meet his brother's eyes. He was too upset.

x

"It's nothing, Dean I ..uh.. just... some of dad's stuff reminded me of bad times." he said trying to deflect Dean's question, but Dean understood his little brother like no other, and he took up position behind Sam's chair.

"What stuff was that?" he asked, using the tone that meant he wasn't going to stop asking until he got the whole truth.

Sam tried to close the journal but Dean's hand inserted itself between the pages, while the other took possession of the book.

"Dean" Sam repeated. "It's nothing, man. Just let it go."

"You were reading the white pages Sam? Just what could there be on blank pages to make you freak out?" Dean asked confused.

"Nothing Dean," Sam agreed, trying to keep his voice steady. "See. I'm fine."

"Yeah, you can feed that to the jerks who don't know you, but I recognise the Sam Winchester face of doom from a mile off; so what did you read?"

x

Sam shrugged and kept his lips pursed. Dean had already turned away from his hero-worship of John, and Sam wasn't going to be the one to make things worse, but Dean's intelligent gaze took in the infra-red goggles, and he made the connection.

"No! Not invisible ink, dude! Dad wouldn't be so banal!" he frowned, but he put them on anyway and read what had upset Sam.

x

"I knew he looked at me different," Sam volunteered shakily now that Dean was scouring the pages. "All the time I was growing up, he knew there was something off about me. From the first moment Dad found out about the supernatural, he suspected mom died because of me!"

Sam's voice rose in anguish. "He wrote down all the times he thought I acted weird, supernaturally weird, that is, from when I was a kid, Dean."

He pointed at the journal.

"John asked himself why the demon appeared in my nursery and not in mom's room or yours," he murmured, his most eyes looking up at his big brother, in search of ….something.

"He was going to kill me the moment he found conclusive evidence that I was something to hunt. Dean, my own father!"

x

"Sammy," Dean whispered, himself shocked to the core by what his father had written "Dad wouldn't have done it. He loved you, man."

"Don't... Dean, please. It's not even the idea that the might have killed me, that hurts; it's the thought that he watched me growing up, waiting for me to go dark-side or something..I..."

Sam laid his head down on the table, unable to continue.

x

Dean threw the journal violently against the far wall as if it were something unholy. There were no words he could offer that would cancel the hurt Sam was feeling, but he had to try.

He put his hands on his little brother's slumped shoulders.

"Listen Sam, I'm not going to defend dad, there's no way I can, nor want to, but he's dead now and all that shit with Azazel is way behind us.

All I know Sammy is that I'm always gonna look out for you. Jeez, you're the only one in this friggin' universe that I care about, and I would still love you if you were the Antichrist himself. Dad is the only one that can answer for what _**he**_ did, but you know what Sammy, even if our lives have been one hit after the other, I'm good.

Remember what you said to me in that freaky parallel reality; that you didn't want to stay there because we weren't even brothers; well you gotta know if I had the choice, I would want to be re-born every time _**always **_being your big brother."

x

Sam stirred beneath Dean's hands at his passionate words.

"Even after all the suffering I've caused you Dean, you'd still want to be my brother?" he sniffed.

"Sammy," Dean answered. "The only suffering I would've had is if I hadn't had your sorry Sasquatch self as my geeky little brother, so come on, you're not gonna mope and deny your awesome big brother a chance to bake the best pie in creation, are you? Huh!"

Sam pulled his head up and turned to look at his brother. "No Dean, I'd never do that, and thanks for...!"

"Enough Sam. My chick-flick vouchers are all finished. I've used up a decade's worth in just five minutes." Dean scolded, happy when he saw the ghost of a smile playing around Sam's lips.

In the Winchesters' lives the hits were just going to keep on coming, but together they would take them all.

X

The enD


End file.
